THE men in suits assured us it
would be swift, precise and decent. Those in khaki, such as General
Tommy Franks, boasted the military machine was so efficient it would
be "a campaign like no other in history".
But, as we have seen in the
images thrown up by the most televisual war ever, it's the same old
dirty, nasty game.
SUFFERING: An Iraqi man
wounded during attacks on Basra
The elderly riddled with
shrapnel and drenched in blood, babies with half their faces burned
and mutilated soldiers lying in the trenches, expose how Baghdad and
Basra today are simply modern equivalents of Dresden and
Coventry.
No matter how smart your bombs
are, war is about laying waste to cities and people. It is about
pain and suffering and the kind of blind panic that has you firing
into a river to kill what you think is a stricken pilot.
And this time the world is
seeing it played out 24 hours a day on a dozen TV channels. Which
might be not only the undoing of Bush and Blair but also the fuse
which sets the anger of the Arab world alight.
SHOCKING AND AWFUL:
Allied forces blitz Baghdad on Friday night
Because this highly-addictive
TV coverage has exploded the myth of the precise and blood-free war.
It has reminded us that war should always be a last resort - and in
this case it is nowhere near it.
It wasn't supposed to be like
this. The propagandists at Allied command gave unprecedented access
to journalists and camera crews in the hope of showing how merciful
their mission was.
But the many sickening sights
we have seen have only strengthened the belief held by the majority
of the world, that this is a futile and immoral attack on people who
currently threaten no outsiders. Where are the chemical attacks?
Where are Saddam's weapons of mass destruction?
Where are the links to
international terrorists? Where are the millions of oppressed Iraqis
defecting en masse to their liberators? Where are all the Iraqi
lies?
INNOCENT: A child burned
during the bombing of Baghdad screams in pain
BAGHDAD has been as honest or
dishonest as Washington. Following Friday's cataclysmic attack you
might have expected them to claim hundreds of dead civilians.
Instead they said there were
three.
What of our side? The Americans
claimed to have taken Umm Qasr two days ago, with their sickeningly
triumphal raising of the Stars and Stripes. Yesterday they were
still fighting. We were told the people of the south, Shi'ite
Muslims who despise Saddam, would surrender without resistance. Some
have. But many others are trying to repel the invaders.
SLAUGHTER: Bodies of
Iraqi soldiers huddled dead in a trench in Southern Iraq - their
white flag couldn't save them
We are not being given the full
truth. We see screaming babies in ramshackle hospitals, stripped
bare of supplies by a dozen years of medicine sanctions, and we
despair at the lie that this war is a humanitarian mission to help a
stricken people.
We see innocent civilians
killed and maimed in their dilapidated homes, and we just don't know
why it is happening in our name.
All we can conclude, especially
after the astonishing blitz of Baghdad, is that Iraq is the testing
ground for a devastating show of American might, aimed at warning
enemies that if they step out of line they will be next. You cannot
understate how dangerous this situation is for the leader of a
Labour government. If Tony Blair loses the propaganda war it will
destroy his credibility and possibly his career. The British will be
tough on his war crimes and tough on the causes of them.
TRIUMPH?: the Stars and
Stripes go up over Umm Qasr
But that is the least of our
worries. You see, we are not the only ones following this war
through a close-up lens. So too are the Arabs.
And they saw something the
other day that our propagandists do not yet admit to. The carnage in
Basra's Jumhuriya hospital following coalition bombing which Iraq
claims killed 77 civilians.
Al Jazeera TV beamed images
across the Arab world of the dead and wounded, including a child
with the back of its skull blown off. "It was a massacre," wailed
one woman.
Imagine what effect that had on
an already raging Arab world. Then imagine what future images of
shock and awe we might soon see on our own doorstep.
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